Convert a PDF to black and white

1 min read·23 July 2026

Colour printing costs more per page than black-and-white. By converting a PDF to greyscale first you save ink and reduce file size. PDFrust does this in one click, free in your browser.

When do you want a black-and-white PDF?

The most common reason is printing: printing a greyscale PDF on a black-and-white printer gives sharper results than the same colour PDF. Greyscale is also useful for archiving, emailing or reducing file size.

How does it work?

Drag your PDF to the grayscale page and click download. The tool renders each page and converts colours to shades of grey. The result is a new PDF that looks exactly the same but without colour.

PDF grayscale

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How much space does it save?

Greyscale PDFs are typically 20–50% smaller than comparable colour PDFs, depending on how much colour is in the original. For mainly text documents the difference is small; for image-heavy documents it can be substantial.

Are there alternatives?

If you want a nostalgic or vintage effect, try the sepia tool: it gives your PDF a warm brown-orange tint. For a dark-mode effect there is the invert tool which swaps black and white.